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Puppet, the Portland-based infrastructure automation company, today announced that it has named former Cloud Foundry Foundation executive director Abby Kearns as its new CTO.
Current Puppet CTO Deepak Giridharagopal will remain in his role and focus on R&D and leading new projects, while Kearns will focus on expanding the companyâs product portfolio and communicating with enterprise audiences.
Kearns stepped down from her role at the Cloud Foundry Foundation earlier this month after holding that position since 2016. At the time, she wasnât quite ready to reveal her next move, though, and her taking the CTO job at Puppet comes as a bit of a surprise. Despite a lot of usage and hype in its early days, Puppet isnât often seen as an up-and-coming company anymore, after all. But Kearns argues that a lot of this is due to perception.
âPuppet had great technology and really drove the early DevOps movement, but they kind of fell off the face of the map,â she said. âNobody thought of them as anything other than config management, and so I was like, well, you know, problem number one: fix that perception problem if thatâs no longer the reality or otherwise, everyone thinks youâre dead.â
Since Kearns had already started talking to Puppet CEO Yvonne Wassenaar, who took the job in January 2019, she joined the product advisory board about a year ago and the discussion about Kearns joining the company became serious a few months later.
âWe started talking earlier this year,â said Kearns. âShe said: âYou know, wouldnât it be great if you could come help us? Iâm building out a brand new executive team. Weâre really trying to reshape the company.â And I got really excited about the team that she built. Sheâs got a really fantastic new leadership team, all of them are there for less than a year. they have a new CRO, new CMO. Sheâs really assembled a fantastic team of people that are super smart, but also really thoughtful people.â
Kearns argues that Puppetâs product has really changed, but that the company didnât really talk about it enough, despite the fact that 80% of the Global 5,000 are customers.
Given the COVID-19 pandemic, Kearns has obviously not been able to meet the Puppet team yet, but she told me that sheâs starting to dig deeper into the companyâs product portfolio and put together a strategy. âThereâs just such an immensely talented team here. And I realize every startup tells you that, but really, thereâs actually a lot of talented people here that are really nice. And I guess maybe itâs the Portland in them, but everyoneâs nice,â she said.
âAbby is keenly aware of Puppetâs mission, having served on our Product Advisory Board for the last year, and is a technologist at heart,â said Wassenaar. âShe brings a great balance to this position for us â she has deep experience in the enterprise and understands how to solve problems at massive scale.â
In addition to Kearns, former Cloud Foundry Foundation VP of marketing Devin Davis also joined Puppet as the companyâs VP of corporate marketing and communications.
Update: we updated the post to clarify that Deepak Giridharagopal will remain in his role.
Cloud Foundry Foundation executive director Abby Kearns steps down to pursue a new executive role elsewhere
Continue readingâŚ
Current Puppet CTO Deepak Giridharagopal will remain in his role and focus on R&D and leading new projects, while Kearns will focus on expanding the companyâs product portfolio and communicating with enterprise audiences.
Kearns stepped down from her role at the Cloud Foundry Foundation earlier this month after holding that position since 2016. At the time, she wasnât quite ready to reveal her next move, though, and her taking the CTO job at Puppet comes as a bit of a surprise. Despite a lot of usage and hype in its early days, Puppet isnât often seen as an up-and-coming company anymore, after all. But Kearns argues that a lot of this is due to perception.
âPuppet had great technology and really drove the early DevOps movement, but they kind of fell off the face of the map,â she said. âNobody thought of them as anything other than config management, and so I was like, well, you know, problem number one: fix that perception problem if thatâs no longer the reality or otherwise, everyone thinks youâre dead.â
Since Kearns had already started talking to Puppet CEO Yvonne Wassenaar, who took the job in January 2019, she joined the product advisory board about a year ago and the discussion about Kearns joining the company became serious a few months later.
âWe started talking earlier this year,â said Kearns. âShe said: âYou know, wouldnât it be great if you could come help us? Iâm building out a brand new executive team. Weâre really trying to reshape the company.â And I got really excited about the team that she built. Sheâs got a really fantastic new leadership team, all of them are there for less than a year. they have a new CRO, new CMO. Sheâs really assembled a fantastic team of people that are super smart, but also really thoughtful people.â
Kearns argues that Puppetâs product has really changed, but that the company didnât really talk about it enough, despite the fact that 80% of the Global 5,000 are customers.
Given the COVID-19 pandemic, Kearns has obviously not been able to meet the Puppet team yet, but she told me that sheâs starting to dig deeper into the companyâs product portfolio and put together a strategy. âThereâs just such an immensely talented team here. And I realize every startup tells you that, but really, thereâs actually a lot of talented people here that are really nice. And I guess maybe itâs the Portland in them, but everyoneâs nice,â she said.
âAbby is keenly aware of Puppetâs mission, having served on our Product Advisory Board for the last year, and is a technologist at heart,â said Wassenaar. âShe brings a great balance to this position for us â she has deep experience in the enterprise and understands how to solve problems at massive scale.â
In addition to Kearns, former Cloud Foundry Foundation VP of marketing Devin Davis also joined Puppet as the companyâs VP of corporate marketing and communications.
Update: we updated the post to clarify that Deepak Giridharagopal will remain in his role.
Cloud Foundry Foundation executive director Abby Kearns steps down to pursue a new executive role elsewhere
Continue readingâŚ